This is a blog dedicated to highlight the issue of Christian Persecution in India. The posts here in contain information about Christian Persecution in India from various sources with links and some exclusive to us. No Copyright infringement is intended. This is only for the purpose of spreading awareness about the ongoing Christian persecution in India. We have no political affiliations. We hope for a nation where all could live in peace with each other.

Saturday, March 29, 2014

A police station official in India’s Jharkhand state this month reviled
Christians who sought protection after Hindu extremists beat and
threatened to kill them for refusing to convert to Hinduism, area church
leaders said.

Accusing Christian leaders of forcible conversion, the Hindu extremists
earlier this month attempted to forcibly convert several church members
after disrupting a home worship service, beating them and parading them
half-naked through the street, area pastor Rampath Nath told Morning
Star News.

Police subsequently registered a case of forcible conversion against four Christians, he said.

Virender Singh, the police official at the station in Patratu Thana,
Ramgarh District, verbally abused the Christians who fled their homes,
rebuked them and sent them away without taking their complaint after the
Hindu extremists beat them on two consecutive days, stripped off their
clothes and chased them from Pali village, Nath said.

Some 10 Hindu extremists stormed into the March 4 worship meeting at the
house of pastor Tilas Bedia at 7 p.m. and began beating the Christians,
including the pastor’s 60-year-old mother, Christian leaders said.

“The extremists asked the Christians why they are following Christ when
they should be worshipping their tribal god and threatened to kill them
if they continued to follow Christ,” Nath said. “They left after they
told the Christians that they will teach them a lesson the next day.”

On March 5 at about 11 a.m. a mob of extremists appeared, led by Suresh
Upadia, leader of the local Vishwa Hindu Parishad, youth wing of the
Hindu extremist Bajrang Dal, and village head Rohan Bedia. They dragged
several Christians from their homes to the compound of the village head,
who summoned a public meeting.

“The extremists dragged about 15 people who come to our prayer
meetings,” said Jodhan Bedia, a pastor at the church. “They let us stand
in the middle and started to verbally abuse us for following Christ,
for being low-caste, and warned us to convert back to Hinduism or face
harm.”

Several terrified church members denied they were Christians, pastors said.

“They ran off after saying they were Hindus,” Tilas Bedia said, “and two
teenage girls who did not deny Christ were forcefully ‘converted’ back
to Hinduism.”

“The extremists slapped them, verbally abused them for their faith in
Christ, threatening them that they will never find a husband if they
remain Christians, and forced them to worship Hindu idols at the spot,”
he said.

The extremists continued to mock and beat Tilas Bedia, and his brother,
Chandra Bedia, as well as the latter’s family; they also beat Jodhan
Bedia.

“We told the extremists that we are ready to leave our house, but we cannot leave Christ,” Tilas Bedia said.

The Hindu nationalists slapped and kicked the Christians and struck them
with their hands, slippers and clubs. The mother of Tilas and Chandra
Bedia fell to the ground from the beating, spraining her ankle as her
face swelled up from the blows, they said.

The extremists then dragged Tilas Bedia, Chandra Bedia and another
Christian leader along a road, paraded them half-naked as they jeered
and beat them, and dragged them to the outskirts of the village.

“They forced us to sign on a blank paper and told us that we will be cut
into pieces if we ever return to the village,” Tilas Bedia said. “They
said, ‘Those who worship Jesus cannot stay in the village.’”

The three Christians, who converted to Christianity about four years
ago, sustained bruises and marks on their backs, and swelling on their
faces and other areas, Nath said.

“On March 10, we received a copy of a First Information Report
registered against pastor Tilas Bedia, Chandra Bedia, pastor Jodhan
Bedia and myself by police officer Virender Singh of forceful
conversion,” Nath said.

Singh was not available for comment, but Ramgarh Superintendent of
Police Shri Ranjit Kumar Singh told Morning Star News that he had
received the Christians’ police complaint and had sent a deputy to
investigate.

“Nobody can say anything about the faith that a person chose,” the
superintendent said. “The Constitution of India has given the right to
each individual to follow the faith that he or she likes. Appropriate
action will be taken against the culprits.”

The pastors were scheduled to appear before a judge on April 4. Area
Christian leaders said there was no instance of forceful conversion by
the accused.

Since Tilas Bedia, Chandra Bedia and Jodhan Bedia began following
Christ, their families have been shunned and boycotted and have faced
continual threats, Nath said.

“They are not allowed to fetch water from the public well, they are not
allowed to walk on the main road and they were prohibited from buying
and selling in the village,” Nath said. “They were often beat up and
verbally abused and warned to renounce Christ or face harm.”

Thursday, March 20, 2014

New Delhi: Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Karnataka top the list of
Indian states in which Christians faced incidents of targeted communal
violence in the year 2013, according to data collected by Evangelical
Fellowship state offices.
Women, rural pastors and home churches were the main targets of mobs
which were often led by members of the Sangh Parivar. Police impunity
resulted in most culprits going unpunished, they claimed.

General Secretary the Evangelical Fellowship of India, Rev. Dr.
Richard Howell and Religious Liberty Commission Secretary Rev. Vijayesh
Lal held a presss conference today in Delhi to release the 2013 partial
list of violence meted out to the minority Christian community across
the country.
As many as 154 incidents of anti-Christian violence were reported in
the year, with Andhra Pradesh registering 42 cases, Chhattisgarh 28 and
Karnataka 27. Karnataka had been wrecked by extreme violence during
August and September 2008 in the wake of the pogrom against Christians
in the Kandhamal district of Orissa.
This list does not include large numbers of cases reported from
Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Rajasthan, which could not be
immediately verified as being motivated by religious prejudice. These
include at least three cases of murder, including one of a child of a
pastor in Rajasthan.
The Evangelical Fellowship also received a very large number of
complaints of structural and institutional violence from Rajasthan,
Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand and Gujarat. Most of these pertain to Tribals
being deprived of their land f they convert to Christianity. In Gujarat,
the computerized registration systems have been so engineered that
Tribals have mandatorily to fill their religion as Hindu.
This is in violation of the Constitutional provisions for Scheduled
Tribes. The matter is to be taken to the High courts of the respective
states. The most shocking aspect of the anti-Christian violence is the
targeting of women. This emerging pattern of violence is seen with great
concern by the Christian leadership. Christian groups now plan to bring
this issue to the notice of national and state political leaders soon.
In one horrendous case on 12th September 2013, a Christian woman,
Sanamma, a helper in Anganwadi School was caught by a mob of 40 people
when she was inviting children to join the school after the summer
break. The mob accused her of forceful conversion, beat her up severely
and took her to a temple where they poured water on her as a form of
religious cleansing and thereafter applied "kumkum" on her forehead, a
sign of Hindu married woman. Local Christians rescued her later and took
her to a hospital for treatment.
In another shocking case in Taragoan, Lohandiguda, Hindutva extremist
activists forcefully took a Christian widow to the temple and tried to
sacrifice her to the idols. Her daughter and relatives rescued the
widow.
The Evangelical Fellowship, in association with other Church groups,
has consistently demanded that the Central government enact suitable
legislation to end communal and targeted violence. We had hoped that
Parliament would pass the Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence
Bill in the last session. It did not happen. We hope that the government
formed after the 2014 General elections will take it up in earnest.

Patnaik was sentenced to 11 years in prison, while Digal and Badhei were each sent to prison for 26 months.

Six of the other accused were acquitted by the court in Orissa because of lack of evidence.

The Catholic nun, working with the Divyajyoti Pastoral Centre
at Kanjemandi village, alleged that she was dragged out of a Hindu
man's house where she had taken shelter along with a 55-year-old priest,
Father Thomas Chellantharayil.

She was taken to an abandoned house where she was raped by a
mob on 25 August 2008. She also alleged that she was paraded naked
through the streets.

Hindu groups in Kandhamal had accused Christian priests of bribing poor tribes and low-caste Hindus to convert to Christianity.